


hiraeth

by butbythegrace



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Established Relationship, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Insomnia, Loneliness, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Resentment, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 03:30:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21385363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butbythegrace/pseuds/butbythegrace
Summary: Roy only truly loves one thing, and Ed isn’t it.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 36
Kudos: 269





	hiraeth

**Author's Note:**

> A bug bite I had to scratch and marathon wrote. Nothing but misery. Please forgive me.
> 
> Tags edited bc who tf was I kidding.
> 
> **Warning:** this opens with Roy literally dragging Ed from his sleep. Please take this into consideration before you read.

It’s late when Roy attempts to pull Ed from the couch by the arm without even trying to wake him first. The first time the idiot had done this Ed's defensive reflexes had sent him tumbling backwards over the coffee table. Ed hadn't even felt bad. Served him fucking right. He probably deserves to have it happen again but Ed’s used to this by now. Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t become so desensitized to these rude awakenings. Maybe a few more surprise falls would keep Roy from repeatedly attempting this bullshit.

“C’mon,” he slurs. “Ed. Is late. Come to bed with me.”

Ed digs a hand into the upholstery of the couch to anchor himself and yanks his other arm from Roy’s grip. He glares up at him, his scruffy chin, rumpled dress shirt, and heavy-lidded eyes. He knows even before the smell of alcohol hits his nose that Roy is drunk. “I was _sleeping_, you ass.”

“Then come sleep in bed.”

Ed blinks until his bleary vision focuses enough to make out the clock on the wall. “It’s two the damn morning, Roy. You really couldn’t just let me be?”

Roy used to understand that Ed's sleep, no matter when or where he gets it, is precious and difficult to find. But it’s not about what Ed needs anymore. It never is.

“I can’t sleep without you,” Roy tells him, even though nowadays that’s a damn lie. He’ll be out and snoring in two minutes flat, and he can tell Ed isn’t buying it. “Please,” he adds pitifully.

Ed bites back the snarky ‘well you've been sleeping just fine alone in your study since before I even got dinner finished, but ok’ and groans in borderline irate frustration. “Jesus fucking-” He covers his face with his hands and takes a deep breath. This is a battle he will never win. Roy will pester and whine and make Ed out to be the one who’s acting like an absurd asshole until he gets what he wants, and Ed doesn’t feel like fighting.

He slams his hands to the couch and pushes himself to stand. “Fine. Let’s go.”

He pushes past Roy and doesn’t wait for him, doesn’t even bother flicking off the lights. He doesn’t care if Roy gets them or not, or how difficult it is for him to find his way up the stairs by himself.

Ed used to be a naked sleeper and it feels wrong to slide into bed with clothes on. They just get bunched up and twisted around and jammed into the joints of his leg and it’s uncomfortable as all fuck, but stripping down gives Roy permission to touch him, to seek intimacy and sex, and that’s not permission Ed is willing to give. It doesn’t always stop Roy from trying, but clothes take a certain amount of dexterity and energy to maneuver, of which he possesses neither when he's been drinking. Ed isn’t going to stay in this bed for long anyway, and gathering his clothes from the floor is just one more thing he’d have to worry about when he leaves.

By the time Ed settles comfortably beneath the covers, Roy comes trudging into the room. It isn't too much of a surprise he successfully navigated the stairs. He isn’t usually a stumbler or a faller, so at least he’s got that going for him.

Ed listens as he struggles a bit with the buttons of his clothes but manages his way out of them, leaving them in a pile on the floor, leaving them for Ed to deal with because he seems to have forgotten how to use the clothes hamper five fucking feet away and Ed is the only one who gives enough of a damn to keep this place together. He’s the only one who does laundry and dishes and cooks and cleans and _cares_ because _someone_ has to. And no, he doesn’t pay rent, and taking care of these things is the least he can do for a roof over his head but it’d be nice if Roy didn’t have to make it so _damn_ difficult by treating him like a maid who has nothing better to do.

It didn’t used to be like this. They used to be a team who either split responsibilities or tackled them together. Ed can’t really remember when that ended.

Roy clambers into bed, invading Ed’s half of the mattress and sloppily pulling him into a rough hold that vaguely resembles cuddling.

Sober Roy would have noticed the tension in his body. Granted, this tension probably wouldn't exist in sober Roy's presence, but he digresses - and he would have asked Ed what was wrong, would have tried to soothe him. Drunk Roy is completely unaware of anything outside of himself. His breathing evens and he’s out less than a few minutes later.

Ed lays wide awake while Roy breathes booze on the back of his neck, the arms holding him too tight and the leg hooked over his hip too heavy. He isn’t sure if it’s funny or depressing that he feels no more trapped like this than he does in general on a daily basis.

He's equally unsure if it's sad or just stupid that he finds himself touched-starved and lonely when he _technically_ isn’t either. It’s one of the worst combinations of shitty feelings, and seeing as he's currently stuck in some sort of weird body lock that can probably be considered affectionate on some difficult to comprehend level, he doesn't really have the right to be feeling them, but he does regardless. It makes his face hot and eyes sting, but he’s not about to have another breakdown about being alone when he isn’t, he fucking _isn’t_ it just _feels_ like it.

He can't tell which is worse though; actually being lonely, or being with someone who makes him feel like he is.

He wiggles an arm loose from Roy's dead weight and rubs his eyes. The stench of alcohol is so strong it's starting to make his stomach turn. There isn’t a chance he’s going to fall asleep like this. Agreeing to come to bed with Roy is just the quickest way to placate him. All he can do is wait for his out.

After what feels like some of the longest minutes of Ed’s life, Roy starts to snore. It marks the chance for Ed to make his move. He carefully eases himself out from under the other man’s lead-weight limbs - a drunk, snoring Roy can sleep like the fucking dead - and slowly brings himself to a sit, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

Roy stops snoring and Ed freezes, watching him cautiously. This is the part where he’s most likely to wake, leaving Ed having to feign needing to use the bathroom, forcing him back to return to bed after and start the painstaking process all over again.

Roy’s chest struggles to rise without completion several times as he tries to breathe around his alcohol-depressed body. Of all the horrible things the drug causes, the apnea is one of the most heartbreaking to witness, and seeing the man he’d once looked up to reduced to this sad creature who can barely breathe is more than Ed can handle. He covers his face with his hand, swallowing against the lump in his throat, resisting the panicky urge to shake Roy awake. He always sorts himself out eventually, but Ed often lays awake in worry that someday he won’t. He used to anxiously monitor him like a parent would their newborn baby. Part of him feels cruel and selfish for giving that up and leaving Roy by himself in such a vulnerable state, but he’s already sacrificed too many nights and too much sanity. He has nothing more to give and only barely enough left to take care of himself.

Roy finally takes a huge, gasping breath, and resumes his snoring. Ed composes himself and slips from the bed.

He’d long ago mapped out a silent path across the creaky wood floor and he follows it with some minor acrobatics, sticking close to heavy furniture and stepping where the sturdiest joints are. He escapes near soundlessly, easing the bedroom door shut behind him, keeping a hand on the knob so the latch doesn’t click. He pauses there, waiting to make sure Roy is still asleep. The next snore makes him sigh with relief, and he picks his way back down the hallway and down the stairs.

Roy had, surprisingly, managed the lights, and only the moon illuminates the room. It leaves everything quiet and still and cold, and Ed feels it again, that pang of loneliness so deep inside him he’s not sure anyone is able to touch it.

He notices a faint glow from the first floor hallway, rolls his eyes, and goes to investigate. The door to Roy’s study is cracked open, light peaking out from around the gap. Leave it to Roy to remember the lights in the great room but forget them in the study.

Ed pushes the door open. The only thing sitting on Roy's desk is an empty fifth. His uniform jacket has fallen from the chair to the floor. Ed should probably leave it. Let the general go to work tomorrow with wrinkles. Let him deal with the consequences. It's tempting, but it wouldn’t teach Roy anything. It would just put him in a shitty mood that Ed would have to deal with when he got home, and it would remain shitty until the first shot of alcohol hit his veins.

Ed picks up the jacket and gently places it back over the chair. He runs his hands across the shoulders and down the sleeves with an ache in his throat that spreads to his chest and seizes his heart.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. He doesn’t know what he’s done right or wrong in attempting to fight this. He’s tried, for well over a year now, to make a difference. It's been a year of constantly needling Roy, of feeling like a fucking disappointed parent, of Roy’s sobriety attempts and relapses and lies and hiding and Ed weighing liquor bottles, and then Roy not even bothering to hide and Ed urging him to get help and Roy refusing, listing all the meaningless reasons why he won't do it and ignoring the the only one that matters, which is his unwillingness to deal with his flaws and sins and pain.

Worst of all, Ed doesn’t understand why he isn’t enough of a reason. He knows, logically, that this addiction and Roy’s refusal to deal with it have nothing to do with him, but it hurts on such a painfully personal level it’s hard to convince his heart it’s the truth.

Ed straightens the collar and cuffs of the jacket and leaves the bottle on the desk. He turns off the light, and shuts the door.

Back in the great room he turns the volume knob on the radio down low before he flicks it on. He grabs a pillow and a blanket and makes himself comfortable on the sofa he’d been rudely removed from ten minutes earlier. He’s never minded sleeping on the couch. He’d made himself a bed out of nothing more than a train bench enough times that he could sleep anywhere anyway, but it doesn’t hurt that Roy has the coziest couches he’s ever had the pleasure of sitting his ass. Or, in this case, escaping from the nightmare of his reality.

His spot is still a little warm. He settles in for what he hopes to be a few more hours of sleep before Roy inevitably wakes to his absence and comes looking to drag him back. It’s a damn miracle the man can even remember he’d half-hauled, half-bullied Ed to bed in the first place, but he does, without fail, every time.

Ed had hoped the radio would provide enough distraction to lull him back to the sleep he'd been stolen from, but tonight he isn’t so lucky. He feels angry and anxious, and his thoughts wander.

He thinks back to how things used to be. How he and Roy had baltered around one another for ages, how longing looks across Roy’s office desk turned into longer looks across library tables turned into obvious eyes across restaurant tablecloths. Ed struggles to remember how much Roy had drank then. It couldn’t have been more than a glass or two of wine. Ed couldn’t have known, or seen it coming. He couldn’t have.

These days he isn’t even sure any of it was real. The slow slide into the depths of this misery was so gradual he can’t even remember when it started to show, let alone when it got bad.

He wonders, as he’s done often lately, what would happen if he left. Would he be able to find a place where he could afford to live on a graduate student’s stipend? Would he be able to find a decent job that would work around his erratic school schedule if he didn’t? Or would he have to throw in the towel and completely give up his education to move back to Resembool and resign himself to life as a rural school teacher or farm hand? Maybe he could take up traveling with Al, but it's hard to imagine not being a burden without his alchemy, even though Al would insist he isn't.

But Roy- what would Roy do without him? Would Ed leaving even be enough incentive to get him sober, or would he slowly self-destruct until he drowned in his own demons?

And in the very possible chance he did lose the battle- would Ed be able to live with himself knowing he’d been the only thing keeping that from happening? That he’d utterly failed the person who needed him most?

Ed presses his face into the couch. It’s the second time in one night he’s been assaulted by the what-if of Roy succumbing to this disease and he feels sick. Aside from preventing the possibility of this, of the man’s life caving in without him, Ed doesn’t understand the point of being here anymore. If he’s completely honest with himself, there isn’t one. The Roy he’d fallen in love with, moved in with, and woven his life so closely with is so far buried below addiction that Ed hardly ever sees him, and being here just makes Ed miss him desperately.

He _could_ talk to Hawkeye - but she hasn't been a part of Roy's command in over a year - or Madame - but she and Roy haven't spoken in almost just as long. They already know anyway. If there wasn't anything they could do then, he doubts nothing more they have to say of it will matter. He's not even sure if Hughes could have made a dent in this, but he wishes, as he selfishly does far too much, that the man was alive to try.

In the low murmur of the radio his brain swims with memories of the life they’d once shared. Roy’s breath minty-sweet on his face, his hands gentle when they touched him, his charm and intelligence that cut like a knife. Staying up late reminiscing or discussing and sometimes debating, Roy testing the arrays Ed could conceive but no longer activate, letting Ed get as close as he could to the science that had once consumed his life. The way that Roy had kissed him, like a damn form of _art_ that almost always turned hot and heavy, and sex that was more than just Roy pulling Ed on top of him and expecting him to immediately be good to go and take care of everything.

And he’s twenty-two years old, okay? He’s in his sexual prime, and they’d come together like the very flint and metal that they’d once weaponized, and incredible sex is definitely near the top of the list of the things Ed misses. But no sex at all is better than the sex they’d been having. No matter how much he drinks, whether it’s just one shot or two or five, Roy’s body gets so depressed by the alcohol that he can barely even get it up, let alone get off. It always took what felt like ages, and he had to get so rough to get himself there that Ed felt like nothing more than an object to be used, just a means to an end. He can’t remember the last time Roy had given him an orgasm, let alone the last time Roy even cared if he did.

It had taken Ed too long to put his foot down, which he’d done mostly for the sake of his own mental health, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought maybe, _maybe_ a no-sex-if-you’ve-been-drinking rule would be enough to get Roy to come around. No such luck. Without physical or emotional intimacy, without affectionate touch and meaningful conversations, it just feels like they're awkward roommates, one almost always inebriated and the other permanently annoyed and frustrated.

_Why are you still here?!_ the rational bit of his brain screams.

His heart’s answer of _because I love him_ is getting harder and harder to believe.

Ed curls in on himself and clutches the blanket a little bit tighter. The tightness in his throat makes his eyes burn and he lets it. Sometimes he just needs that, to let it be what it is, and let it out.

The tears flow and drip without him having to blink, and before he knows it his shoulders are shaking in barely aborted sobs.

He used to sneak out of bed to save Roy from the misery of the aftermath of his nightmares, or the depression that would hit when he couldn’t manage to fall asleep, or when the automail pain go so bad he couldn't get comfortable. Roy in his default setting truly did have a difficult time sleeping without Ed. He would come looking for him with mussed-up hair and clutching a pillow and adorably rubbing his eyes. If Ed was already asleep by the time Roy found him, he would wake the next morning covered in a blanket with Roy crammed into the adjoining loveseat. If he found Ed in a similar state to what he’s in now, he would do his best to fix it with love and patience. He would wipe away Ed’s tears and tenderly wrap his own body around Ed’s and murmur sweet things and stories until Ed was back in touch with reality. If he couldn’t convince Ed to go to bed, they would fall asleep squished and tangled together right there on the couch.

Who can Ed turn to for comfort when the only one who offered it is now the person who causes him to seek it? When did he allow himself to become so isolated?

The pillow swallows his tears and cries as he grieves for what's been lost. What he would give just for a gentle hand brushing through his bangs, or lips pressed to his forehead as they whisper 'I love you', to just be _noticed_ when he needs to be. He wants it badly enough he would even consider sending his arm back into the gate if it guaranteed he could relieve Roy of this sickness and have all of that back.

Above everything alcohol has taken from him, he misses being loved. Because this Roy only truly loves one thing, and Ed isn’t it.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to visit me over on [tumblr](https://butbythegrace.tumblr.com/).


End file.
